Fatherhood: Do Paternity Tests Really Matter?
Over the last decade, the number of paternity tests taken every year jumped 64 percent, to more than 400,000. That figure counts only a subset of tests — those that are admissible in court and thus require an unbiased tester and a documented chain of possession from test site to lab. Other tests are conducted by men who… buy kits from the Internet or at the corner Rite Aid, swab the inside of their cheeks and that of their putative child’s and mail the samples to a lab. Of course, the men who take the tests already question their paternity, and for about 30 percent of them, their hunch is right. Yet as troubled as many of them might be by that news, they are even more stunned to discover that many judges find it irrelevant. State statutes and case law vary widely, but most judges conclude that these men must continue to raise their children — or at least pay support — no matter what their DNA says.
This is truly outrageous. This should provoke a million man march on Washington.
The article describes a man who is now paying child support for a child of another man. The “victim” and his wife divorced, she married the child’s natural father, and the three of them are living as an intact natural family. Yet the man who was deceived for many years and is now off on his own is still required to pay child support. This sound to me like court imposed slavery!
The disturbing thing is –if you ar a male — this could happen to any of us, at least in principle.
I think there is a constitutional issue here. This is involuntary servitude.
Improving connections, imoipvrng the connections between neighborhoods, and strengthening quality of life within neighborhoods:Sorry I missed this important meeting due to personal conflicts, but one of the things I’ve felt about Acton is the land development is not uniform (not a single shared image as someone stated) there is the West Acton downtown area, the school area, the East side (Great Road and adjoining neghborhoods) which have more shopping, the very rural North-west side (closer to Littleton) with plenty of conservation land, and central Acton with the Town center, library and side-walked Rt. 27.One thing I want to see improvement in is the quality of life within neighborhoods. Presently, my neighborhood the rural sleepy side nestled inside woods, deer, and really tall unstable trees adjoining our narrow roads makes it unsafe to walk, let alone bike. We still have a lot of downed trees, unattended for clean up. There are a lot of existing potholes, and I don’t see much activity in the neigborhood.I think we need to have roads in such rural neighborhoods paved with atleast 1 or 2 street lights per road, in addition to the long term development of sidewalks and bikepaths. Trees are a wonderful thing for a Green town, but when Mother Nature has started to take them down for every storm occurrence with the price of even more inaccessible roads, downed power lines and power outages, its time to seriously think about the infrastructure for connections between neighborhoods in Acton. Having missed the important session this week, I may be re-hashing some thoughts discussed, but am willing to help out in development of neighborhoods, while preserving the environmental character of Acton.